I've always had a plan to start a game studio. Because of the release of "Tank Survivor", this plan has become more realistic.

But setting up a studio requires a lot of money, and appointments with potential sponsors are very unpredictable. Fortunately, I recently had such an opportunity in China, but had to leave immediately to meet with them.

The good news is that I took all the source code with me before leaving the United States, which allowed me to continue development during the nearly month-long trip; the bad news is that only the source code was taken away, and my Mac Book Pro is not powerful enough to handle the build process. So, the best-case scenario is to do a major update to the game using the work I've done during this time when I return to the US at the end of April.

As mentioned before, I'm building a team specifically to develop multiple-player games. I plan to recruit a full-time art director and a technical artist (the technical artist is required to be proficient in C# programming). Currently, the studio has been registered, the organizational structure and incentive mechanism have been designed, and even the office location has been confirmed and decoration has started in advance. Here are some basic information regarding recruitment:

Work location: Jiangbeizui, Jiangbei District, Chongqing, China (relocation assistance provided)
Nationality requirements: Chinese citizens or possessing permanent residence in China
Benefits: Medium living standard guarantee in the working area (paid in the form of salary, negotiable) + project income based on contribution ratio

Position 1: Chief Game Graphic Designer (Main Artist)
Number of positions: 1
Job Content: Leading the look and feel design of all aspects of the game
Minimum eligibility requirements: Experience as an artist on a released game

Position 2: Technical Art
Number of positions: 1
Job content: Cooperate with the main programmer and the main artist's work
Minimum eligibility requirements: Experience in technical art, proficiency in using Unity, familiarity with UI design, familiarity with C# programming, familiarity with painting, and having personal Painting Album or samples

If you are interested in joining us, please send your resume to downwes@gmail.com or add WeChat kingstone023

Let's jump right into the development plans for Tank Survivor.

This is the part that I am good at, and it will also be the part that takes priority and takes up the most time. I will implement/improve the following systems:

• Increase the types of monsters, planning to increase them from the current 4 to 8 types
  
• Added remote/siege type monster abilities
  
• Strengthen the monster's mechanism through waves and levels, and gradually increase the challenge
  
• Optimize the attack AI of monsters, no longer get stuck in groups
  
• Increase the number of monsters on the same screen

• Improve the numerical difference design of tank components (such as the shooting interval of the main gun and machine gun)
  
• Display the numerical difference of tank parts in the garage and shop
  
• Distinguish the performance of different types of artillery shells (armor-piercing, high-explosive, impact range)

• Redesign building functions
  
• Added design of resource-based buildings
  
• Let the upgrade of buildings bring benefits to soldiers
  
• Optimize the attack AI of soldiers, no longer bunching up and getting stuck, and can intelligently allocate targets instead of everyone attacking the same enemy.

• Achieve the ability to adjust the position of soldiers between attacks (arrangement system)
  
• Implemented new defense category in the camp building tab
  
• Implement the arming of the watchtower
  
• Implement grenade support in the camp
  
• Implement wall upgrades

• Add enhanced cards related to fixed-point defense (such as watchtowers), tanks, and tank weapons
  
• Add legendary level enhanced cards

• Added a monster camp, allowing players to lead troops to attack. After the attack, there will be a large amount of silver coin rewards (used to unlock external rewards)

• Add attack and defense types, and design the restraint relationship between them

• Added text feedback for soldiers triggering critical hits
  
• Add text feedback for soldiers triggering beheading
  
• Add soldier status feedback (such as: the last magazine)
  
• Increase soldier action feedback (such as: reload/instant reload/2x reload)
  
• Tank kill text feedback
  
• Tank killstreak feedback
  
• Tank impact feedback
  
• Monster killed/death feedback

This is the part I'm not good at. Improvements mainly come from outsourcing or help from friends.

• Add store display image of tank parts
  
• Redraw the cover image of the game
  
• Redraw the game loading interface diagram
  
• Re-upload game screenshots
  
• Redraw the avatars of soldiers in the recruitment interface in the game

• Add tank explosion special effects
  
• Modify tank weapon shooting/explosion special effects

• Improve the tube card shooting and add more scene details
  
• Replace shaders and use cartoon style rendering or realistic style rendering (to be decided)

This is the part I'm good at. There are some sound effects that I can sample myself, but most of them still have to buy other people's works.

• Add main interface music
  
• Add rest stage music
  
• Add battle phase music

• Added soldier sound effects (recruitment/movement/attack/death)
  
• Add monster sound effects (birth/movement/attack/death)
  
• Add weapon sound effects (launch/explosion)
  
• Add menu sound effects

Mainly optimization for CPU and GPU usage

• Optimize AI scripts to reduce the amount of processing operations per frame
  
• Perform surface reduction optimization and replacement of the model in the scene to reduce the amount of processing operations per frame

• Knowledge blind spot, need to consult more classics.

The game plans to add support for controller players, and the final effect will be to run correctly on the Steam Deck.

The game will add tutorial levels, it may be a large tutorial level, or it may be a set of small tutorial levels, but there will definitely be one. The format of the tutorial will ultimately depend on the content of the game.

The completion of the tutorial level is an announcement that the game will be officially released soon. Otherwise, the game will remain in the EA stage.

It has been exactly 10 days since the release of Tank Survivor. During these ten days, a total of 4 bug fix patches and 1 important regular gameplay update were released. These are all inseparable from the feedback from friends who helped test and the community. I would also like to thank the remaining players for their support, I really appreciate it!

Before I continue to announce the development plans, I would like to share some interesting behind-the-scenes facts and timeline of the development of this game:

• Tank Survivor is a game independently developed by a single player
  
• The game was actually registered on Steam for release in 2022, but it was a completely different game at that time
  
• The name of the predecessor game is Spellcasting Fast and Slow: Bloody Fight to the End. It is an online competitive game, codenamed Ogre Project.
  
• The design of the Ogre project is inspired by Chinese Mahjong and World of Warcraft’s two-headed Ogre April Fools’ Day joke
  
• The main gameplay of Ogre Project is that two players control the same hero character. One player is responsible for synthesizing elemental spells, and the other player is responsible for casting spells. It is a 4-party battle game with a total of 8 players.
  
• The Ogre Project successfully produced a prototype and completed online testing on Steam
  
• The Ogre project is also developed by me personally. Although I tried to find people to cooperate with me in the community, I failed.
  
• After the prototype of the Ogre project was completed, it ran into a bottleneck because the idea was so ambitious that it was expected to take one person about 5 to 10 years to complete.
  
• The last time the Ogre project was launched was 10 months ago, and then the project fell into silence
  
• 9 months ago, I started to organize the useful code assets of the project, sum up experience, and try to encapsulate it into an independent framework for future use.
  
• 6 months ago, a simpler game was built based on the code stripped out of the Ogre project, with the goal of releasing it on Steam
  
• The game cut off excessive creativity and decided to use simple elements such as common "survivors", "barrage shooting" and "light meat pigeons"
  
• In terms of the number of players, the new game still chooses to be developed based on the multiplayer framework, but only single-player gameplay is produced for the time being.
  
• In order to simplify development, tanks, a unit with no limbs and no need for complex animation management, were chosen as the protagonist. The game was renamed Tank Survivor.
  
• 5 months ago, the game implemented the tank system in the promotional video, which allows you to combine different chassis, turrets, main guns, and engines at will.
  
• 4 months ago, the core gameplay was implemented, that is, after killing a monster, the monster will drop the soul, and other monsters will upgrade after picking it up. The source of inspiration is the synthetic watermelon.
  
• 3 months ago, the level design was completed, the model selection was completed in the asset store, and the first concept trailer was released
  
• 2 months ago, after playing Palu for a week, I was enlightened and decided to abandon excessive innovation again, overturn the previous gameplay, and redo the core gameplay.
  
• 1 month ago, tank survivors have become similar to what they are now

During the development process, I personally experienced many situations where I was unable to do what I expected. For example, I knew that the AI could be written better but had no time to do it; I knew that adding feedback after the shot hit would make things better for the players, but there were more important things. The experience needs to be modified first, etc... Every work becomes very urgent after the release. If it is not released and there is no way to get feedback from players to improve the game, I can only say that fortunately Steam has the option of EA stage, which really saves Indie games, especially games developed by one person.

Now that it's been released to the public, all I can do is try not to advertise until it's perfected, accept feedback from players, and open an Excel spreadsheet to copy and paste the development plan into the community - players have the right to know what the game in front of them will be like. Become something.

Adding more to this article would make it too long and difficult to read. I will open a new announcement to explain the planned direction of this game in terms of gameplay, graphics, sounds, feedback, etc.

For the development plan, please see: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2158370/view/4136066130010334179

In honor of the first regular update for Tank Survivors! Based on player feedback, the priorities of some features awaiting development have been adjusted. Now the game has added some new features and adjusted some values.

Uncomfortable operation is a common feedback. As a solution, players can now use the mouse to aim and shoot! The method is to hold down the right button of the mouse, and the tank's turret and barrel will aim at the point indicated by the player's mouse. At this time, hold down the right button and press the left button of the mouse to fire! Moreover, sliding the mouse wheel can also switch the main gun and secondary weapons.

At the same time, the previous design of using the keyboard arrow keys to operate the tank turret is still retained, and players can seamlessly switch between the two operations in the game.

Although the function is implemented, there are still some minor flaws in mouse aiming, but overall it does not affect the experience. In future versions, we will continue to optimize this function.

Tanks being useless is another common feedback, but that's not my intention. Since improving the tank's design was already in the development plan, I decided to prioritize the functionality of the tank - the tank can now crush the enemy!

The crushing effect is directly proportional to the tonnage of the tank: the greater the tonnage, the higher the damage, and at the same time, the lower the impact damage received. At the same time, in order to make the game look a little more reasonable, I decided to introduce a speed variable, which determines the minimum speed at which damage is caused based on the tonnage of the tank. For example: the Soviet BT-7 light tank only weighs about 12 tons in the game. To drive it to hit the enemy, you must reach a speed of 7.8; while the German Tiger I tank weighs more than 50 tons in the game, which means As long as the speed exceeds 2, it can cause crushing damage to the enemy.

The front and rear of the tank can crush the enemy. However, according to Newton's second law, when the tank causes crushing damage to the enemy, it will also suffer damage. The amount of damage is related to the size of the enemy.

In short, unless it is particularly necessary, it is still recommended to use unlimited machine gun ammunition to attack the enemy.

It is worth mentioning that level 2 and level 3 supply stations can replenish the tank’s main gun ammunition and restore a certain percentage of the tank’s health.

• Now when you enter the game, there will be 100 units of basic materials.
  
• Infantry attack range decreased by 2
  
• The descending angle of all tank barrels is now increased by 5 degrees.

• Fixed the bug that the recruitment station can only recruit one soldier for free regardless of level. The effect is now the same as the building description.
  
• Fixed the bug that some buildings could not correctly provide resources according to the building description at level 3.
  
• Fixed a bug where some tank barrels could not be raised and lowered correctly
  
• Fixed a bug where sometimes bullets could not hit the terrain correctly
  
• Fixed the bug that sometimes the tank supply station could not supply tanks correctly.

Added some rocks to the cliffs in the game scene
The battlefield surface has been re-levelled and is now a flat surface.